@PeterLG @Jinjirrie There's also a lot to be said about the American right setting up new, politically correct terms for things

[aj@gts.sadauskas.id.au]

@PeterLG @Jinjirrie There's also a lot to be said about the American right setting up new, politically correct terms for things.

I don't mean "politically correct" in the bastardised sense of 'not being an arsehole to marginalised groups' (itself a politically correct reframing from the right).

I mean in the original sense of the word, where a particular term is coined or deemed "correct" for political reasons.

Because there's been a lot of that from the American right lately, hasn't there?

The "Gulf of America". The "War Department". Lake Ontario becoming "Lake America". "Woke" being stretched to include anything the American right finds politically incorrect. "Fake news" being redefined from deliberate disinformation presented as news to "any news the American right finds politically incorrect or unfavourable, even if objectively accurate".

Conversely, we've seen CNN and Stephen Colbert and the New York Times and countless others censured by the American right for being politically incorrect.

And now this bizzare attempt now to coin a new term for "large language models".

This is part of a very long history of political correctness on the American right.

Think the McCarthy witch-hunts and the House unAmerican Activities Committee censuring people for engaging in free speech the American right deemed politically incorrect.

Think back to the Bush Administration. We had "freedom fries" and "enemy combatants" and the "Axis of Evil" and "climate change" all pushed as politically correct new terms.

We had the Dixie Chicks censured by the right for being politically incorrect in questioning the Iraq War. We had Janet Jackson censured by the right for being politically incorrect by displaying a black woman's nipple on TV for a fraction of a second.

Sure, the left engages in political correctness too. But it's usually motivated by a desire to no longer use terms that have been historically used to vilify and incite violence against marginalised people.

You may argue that's misguided and that systematic discrimination needs the systematic dismantling of systems of oppression. But at least there's usually a benevolent motivation behind it.

For the American right, there is no benevolent motivation.

It's all power.

Now let's look at how the right's political correctness gets described, compared to the left.

When the left does it, it's censorship. It's Orwellian. It's an attack on free speech.

When the right does it?

Radio silence.

It needs to be called out for what it is. A politically correct attack on free speech.